An Academic Approach to Writing about Games...
For one of my PhD courses, the primary assignment for this semester is a detailed literature review, then a discussion on where research should go in the future related to a specific concept or field of study. Something similar to the bookends of a dissertation, without the vast amount of content in between. So naturally, I'm trying to come up with something related to games and education to write about. Academic writings are extremely narrow and focused, going into great detail about something very specific. Personally, I'm much more of a broad-minded person who often times has trouble narrowing down ideas. For my assignment, I'm trying to figure out what I should focus on:
1. The connection between games and today's students. I've written about this before for past courses and cited journal articles from around the world that discuss characteristics of the Net Generation, or digital natives. This somewhat ties to games, but the actual bulk of the literature review would simply be summarizing research conducted on people approximately 30 years old and younger. Might not be very interesting (but vitally important if the games-for-education field is going to grow).
2. Games as a motivating factor. This would somewhat relate to option #1. So many young people play games today, that they definitely have an appeal. Even games that do not directly relate to class material could act as catalysts to motivate and interest students early in a course. I'm not so sure how much research is out there relating to this issue at this time.
3. Games and Flow Theory. Flow Theory is something I just started reading about. It basically deals with how and why people get into a 'flow' state of mind - when they are so engrossed with something, they simply lose track and their surroundings. Whatever they are engaged with keeps them moving forward at a consistent pace. This idea really appeals to me, because it is obvious that games (especially good games) can create this state of mind in players. If this state of flow could be re-created in education...wow. Teachers and facilitators constantly complain that when they are in front of the classroom lecturing or facilitating, students tone them out. Some combination of flow theory research tied to games might enlighten people to the power of game-based approaches to education and training. I think flow theory = the gaming 'sweet spot' to gamers...that's when a game is difficult enough to be challenging and motivates you to keep playing, but not so difficult you become frustrated and turn the game off.
4. Community creation and management in games, and how that model could be used for education. Games often create highly-active communities that are formed, operated, maintained, and moderated by the players (with little to no involvement from the developers). Finding a way to create this model in education where students and/or faculty communities could develop and thrive would be a giant step forward.
5. The use of mod tools in education. This is one of the areas that has a good deal of literature, especially from the military, and an area that I'm interested in. Mods could allow small groups of people, even individuals, the ability to create educational environments fast and cheap to facilitate learning. Add to that most games are now shipping with developer mod tools available...the opportunities are growing in this area.
Initially I'm favoring options #3 and #5, but I guess it depends on what types of research I can dig up to base my paper on.
1 Comments:
For research on #3, you might look at J Yellowlees Douglas and Andrew Hargadon's chapter in First Person, "The Pleasures of Immersion and Interaction: Schemas, Scripts, and the Fifth Business". They talk about flow in terms of hypertext and games, but they don't really talk about education. I know Jane does use those principles in her pedagogy, though. I think there's a potential problem in using this concept, though, since it relies on conflating game play with performance (as in athletic or musical) which is a controversial assumption to make.
Also, there's a good deal of community making involved MOO-based pedagogy, and it's based on a very basic kind of Modding as well. (There's a lot on MOO pedagogy in Kairos).
And on number 2, I don't have any research, but I can say from experience that using games to "grease the wheels" of education has advantages and disadvantages. I used it in a writing/lit class where I had students play a game and post to a blog keeping track of their progress through the game and how it related to whatever we were doing in the course at that time. I got a lot of really positive responses to that ("Cool! We get to play video games in a college class!"), but I also got some resistance ("I have never played a video game and I don't see why I have to now.") At any rate, I generally don't like using games as a gimmick, which is what you fall into unless you do a lot of specific building on and tying in of game content.
Anyway, that's my .02
Good luck with you're research.
Zach
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